Whilst overnighting in Shipley Travelodge on Christmas Eve night we caught this year's BBC Ghost Story for Christmas, The Room in the Tower.
Horror connoisseur Mark Gatiss, who attended the former Bretton College up the road in Wakefield, has for years done a stirling job keeping this treasured old BBC staple alive and despite me falling asleep half way through on account of manifold festive drinks earlier, I saw enough of The Room in the Tower to appreciate the effort put in and thought the final moment truly horrific!
With the loss of the brilliant series Inside No.9 starring fellow Brettonians Reece Sheersmith and Steve Pemberton, there's only really Gatiss's Ghost Stories flying the flag for new BBC horror. It's slim pickins these days, so I'll have to reacquaint myself with those old BBC Christmas spirits from previous years, as I'm sure there's an omnibus on the TV one night this Christmas. If not, I've got them all on DVD.
In the meantime, there's this fabulous BFI post about the locations of the original BBC Ghost Stories, mostly based on the tales of the superb M.R. James:
Ghost Stories for Christmas: how TV’s most haunting locations look today | BFI https://share.google/0BGTnezq1EgOKBsRD
So mesmerizing were and are the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas that I've done the very same thing myself and visited at least one location in the past and blogged about it at the time:
MOONBASE CENTRAL: A MORNING FOR THE CURIOUS https://share.google/9MSGSbsLjWhFkvBTi
Do you like these BBC TV films readers?
I truly hope Mark Gatiss and company keep this old thing alive and kicking.
For now though, newness will have its wicked way, as we settle down with a plate of Christmas leftovers and appreciate the latest offering from the global American phenomenon that is Stranger Things.
Having really enjoyed all the Stranger Things series a few years back, the Missus and me were excited about the new series shown this November after the shows long hiatus.
Despite having all the very familiar elements - Eleven, the Upside Down etc - we came away having watched those four latest episodes feeling underwhelmed.
It seemed a bit of a mess to us.
Still, there's this Christmas's installment so maybe all will be redeemed when the Demigorgon visits again!
I was interested to see on the BBC News that the BBC Radiophonics Workshop had a final reunion this winter at their old Maida Vale studio.
As a youngster I adored the workshop"s fabulous LP records of horror sounds, two of which I still have, but probably the most impactive and famous thing they created was the Dr.Who theme tune.
All Gallafreyan pensioners now, these 1950's pioneers of electronica enjoyed once last blast together in February.
Like my own records from the 1970's, most of the workshop's iconic sounds can now be enjoyed and used by artists and musicians everywhere.
Did/ do you like their work readers!
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/bbcstudios/2025/bbc-radiophonic-workshop-
On a frosty day trip to the Peak town of Buxton nestled betwixt snowy hills the Missus and me mooched among the many charity shops.
Prices of vintage toys and games have shot up in Charities of late, especially old board games, of which I saw a few like Airport, Hotel, Escape from Colditz and Totopoly.
I did pick up some some old tech, namely a 1989 VHS pre-cert Kung Fu Horror film called The Men from the Monastery, a 1974 Shaw Brothers production. I collect old horror and thriller videos, preferably big box but small and pre-cert are fine too. This is the first 1980's horror video I've seen in a charity shop for years, so I was chuffed.
I also got a set of BBC Radio cassette tapes of their 1981 production of Lord of the Rings. This is the 2001 re-issue and just part 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, which I first heard, along with the rest, in the Spring and summer of 1981, whilst volunteering for the RSPB at the Ouse Washes. It was all very Middle Earth!
I like Tolkien tapes and books and have a few. The older the better and preferably with classic art on the covers. I have sold some old computer games like the Hobbit and regret it, as the box art was fabulous.
Have you any old VHS or Videos or Lord of the Rings books and cassettes?
More shivers from the haunted BBC back in 1972.
Perfect for Christmas!
What would Christmas be without a few old school scares!
From the haunted 1970's and perfect for my birthday chills!
On the BBC 1972.
I found this recently, a Skip and Fuffy jigsaw puzzle based on characters from BBC TV's multi-coloured Swap Shop in the Seventies.
I don't remember them at all. You?
I caught on the tellybox an episode of BBC's The Repair Shop, where this Yellow Submarine was restored to what you see in the picture.
It was of great interest as I both had a Yellow Sub as a kid and I restored one myself in the 1990's, an early and very poor attempt at anything of the sort.
It was a great TV restoration and the craftspeople in the Repair Shop are so skilled it's amazing. I was intrigued as to how the restorer would do it. Bearing in mind that every part of the Yellow Submarine can be bought off the shelf as a repro part nowadays, I knew the restorer would ignore this and do everything from scratch.
Coincidentally the periscopes he made from modelling putty. Years ago when I made my own scopes I used Das Pronto. Mine were terrible. The restorer's were simply brilliant, especially once the paint lady had painted them yellow and red.
With all the mechanisms fixed, a new propeller made from plastic and the periscopes in place, the owner of the special object was thrilled to bits. It all worked and looked fab!
Interestingly the back-story was that this Corgi Submarine was given to the owner's Dad on the night of the Yellow Submarine film premier in the Sixties, whilst attending it!
Have you been given a special toy? Have you restored a die-cast, even a Yellow Sub readers?
The Moonbase Missus and me have just got back from an overnight stay in our new fave town, Barton Upon Humber in North Lincolnshire. An hour away from Moonbase down the M62, its old and pretty enough to keep us both happy and enough charity shops and cafes to make a sound Saturday morning.
We also went to a Friday night gig, the main reason for going, to see one Nick Harper at the Ropery Hall.
Nick Harper is the son of folk rock legend Roy Harper, as in Hats off to .... by Led Zep. It can't have been easy forging a musical career in such a legendary shadow but Nick, who we only discovered last month, is enough of a songsmith and above all a guitar virtuoso to completely hold his own and being now 58 has done for decades.
Mind-blowingly original in both voice and guitar you can catch up with Nick Harper here. He's playing Birkenhead tonight!
Mr. Harper was ably supported by a fabulous warm-up act, Patrick Duff. Another fabulous singer-songwriter and guitarist, the small Barton crowd were definately blown away with his seasoned talent and incredible set of lungs! As a teenager he was the frontman of indie band Strangelove, compatriots of Britpop founders Suede and hailed as the next big thing before rock 'n' roll took its toll. You can read about Patrick's life here. We bought his biography for a friend.
After a decent kip overnight we hit Barton's church museum and shops this morning, fuelled by coffee and a Lincolnshire sausage butty.
St Peter's Church is a medieval structure now run as a museum by English Heritage. Full of preserved skeletons of dead residents, ample diseased bones, split skulls and burial artefacts from its hundreds of graves, its one of the most dug-up and researched places from the Middle Ages anywhere. Well worth a visit especially if you're a member of English Heritage, its a grounding pile with its many dark spaces like this, the bell tower.
The charity shops were reassuringly full of the living residents of Barton and proved bountiful too. Well at least I thought so. See what you think in the snap below.
The K-Tel 40 Supergreats double album, £1, is in near mint condition, a gift for a mate; the JLA novel collection I'd never seen before and in very good shape for £1 each too; the Dr. Who VHS tapes were a punt to be honest - being from the early 1990's they're not old enough for my own VHS collection but maybe of interest to a buyer on Ebay. £1 each, the double set £3.
There were lots more Dr. Who VHS tapes - should I have got them all? - and a huge collection of hardback books called the History of Dr. Who, each book sealed in plastic and unopened and probably a part-work. At £3 each they were too rich for my purse. What do you think?
I also snaffled this Dragon magazine from the hey-day of Kung Fu.
With the great Jimmy Wang Yu on the cover and also the centrefold, I so remember these mags and had them all as a youngster. I still have a quite a few now boxed up with my Inside Kung Fu pile in the attic. Did you have magazines like this as a kid?
As a teenager I was nuts about monsters.
Films and comics were my main course and the grislier the better, so when the BBC Radiophonics Workshop issued its first Sound Effects of Death and Horror in 1977 I was thrilled to add grisly sounds to my menu!
I was 16 when the record came out, my secondary school days nearly over but my love of monsters as strong as ever. The LP cover was a absolute cracker, as gory as anything past like those gruesome Witches Tales comics covers. To be honest I'm amazed the BBC had the courage to release it at all!
There's so much going on on the cover art, something for everyone! Back then it was always the circular wasp woman in the round window that mesmerised me, a bit like those hypnotic port-holes on the Led Zep III LP cover.
Our first night home after getting back from our Christmas break in Whitby was spent in front of the telly with Blue the old dog, back from his holiday at Mutlins. It's still very festive with the tree lights casting their magic so a few glasses of sherry and some cheese and crackers came out too.
The Missus caught up with an omnibus of Call The Midwife on TV and laptop-earphones at the ready I re-discovered an old Xmas gift, a boxed DVD set of BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas I got a few years ago and a real slice of vintage nostalgia from when I were a mere lad.
I decided to watch two stories I'd not seen before, both appearing at the end of the series at Christmas in the late 1970's. They were also unusual in that a new director was brought in, they were written especially for the BBC and they were not period pieces. You could also say that they were folk horror rather than ghost stories, a sign of the times back then perhaps. Don't read any further if you don't want to know what happens.
The first, Stigma, is about a menhir being moved from a garden adjacent to Avebury Stone Circle. Not something I would do. As soon as the stone is lifted by workmen the woman of the house is afflicted with bleeding from the skin. As the workmen discover an ancient skeleton riven with long daggers beneath the stone the woman's bleeding becomes fatal. Her daughter tells the workmen how witches were once killed and buried this way. The end.
Stigma reminded me of the themes found in more horror-based TV series like Beasts and folk-horror TV plays like Muren and The Photograph. Having camped in Avebury Ring in the late Seventies, when this was first shown on the telly, the film struck a real chord with me and took me right back to my new age days.
The second, the Ice House, is less straightforward I thought. It concerns a guest house run by an odd young brother and sister. A man checks in for a period of saunas, massage and general relaxation. The owners give him all their attention and show him their beloved tropical and intoxicating vine and strange ice house. He sees a face in the ice. The guest becomes obsessed with both the vine and ice and the siblings guide him steadily towards the open door of the ice house, which he willingly enters. The end.
All is not what it seems in the Ice House and I'm not sure exactly what was going on. The brother and sister appear to be extending people's lives by freezing them in the ice, from which they re-emerge somewhat colder. The vine appears to be other-worldly - alien? - and the siblings kiss beneath it. Everyone in the film talks strangely. You could say posh but that doesn't describe it. The pronoun 'one' is used constantly and does create an aura of eeriness and manipulation. I'm really not sure at all what the siblings were: witches? ancient beings? aliens?
Both TV films are available on BBC iPlayer for a while.
Have you seen either of these readers? What did you think?
 | Thursday 22nd - Tinplate & General Toy Sale Friday 23rd - Model Train Sale Thursday 29th - Matchbox Sale Friday 30th - Doll and Teddy Bear Sale |
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  NEW TELEVISION SERIES ABOUT TOYS TO BE FILMED AT VECTIS Exciting news! We're letting the cameras in to make a brand new ten-part documentary series for UKTV called Scouting for Toys. For the next few months, a team from BBC Studios will be based here at our HQ in the northeast to explore the weird and wonderful world of toy collecting and toy auctions - and they'd love to hear from you. So, if you're a buyer, a seller, a collector, a dealer or an expert and you have an interesting "toy story" - or you know somebody who does - please get in touch. They are after anybody with a passion for toys, basically. We know it won't be everybody's cup of tea but you can have a friendly chat with them before committing to anything - they don't bite! Naturally, the real stars of the show will be the toys so if you are sitting on a treasure trove of rare items, or you've just found something in the attic and you want to get an expert opinion on it, why not get in touch? No story (or toy) is too big or small! If you're interested in taking part or want to find out more please feel free to get in touch with the Kirk at BBC team, or talk to one of us. Email: kirk.barber@bbc.co.uk | |
